Sir Thomas Browne

Sir Thomas Browne (born Oct. 19, 1605, London—died Oct. 19, 1682, Norwich, Norfolk, Eng.) was an English physician and author, best known for his book of reflections, Religio Medici.

After studying at Winchester and Oxford, Browne probably was an assistant to a doctor near Oxford. After taking his M.D. at Leiden in 1633, he practiced at Shibden Hall near Halifax, in Yorkshire, from 1634, until he was admitted as an M.D. at Oxford; he settled in Norwich in 1637. At Shibden Hall Browne had begun his parallel career as a writer with Religio Medici, a journal largely about the mysteries of God, nature, and man, which he himself described as “a private exercise directed to myself.” It circulated at first only in manuscript among his friends. In 1642, however, it was printed without his permission in London and so had to be acknowledged, an authorized version being published in 1643. An immediate success in England, the book soon circulated widely in Europe in a Latin translation and was also translated into Dutch and French.

Browne began early to compile notebooks of miscellaneous jottings and, using these as a quarry, he compiled his second and larger work, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or, Enquiries into Very many received Tenets, and commonly presumed truths (1646), often known as Browne’s Vulgar Errors. In it he tried to correct many popular beliefs and superstitions. In 1658 he published his third book, two treatises on antiquarian subjects, Hydriotaphia, Urne-Buriall, or, A Discourse of the Sepulchrall Urnes lately found in Norfolk, and The Garden of Cyrus, or the Quincunciall Lozenge, or Net-Work Plantations of the Ancients. Around the theme of the urns he wove a tissue of solemn reflections on death and the transience of human fame in his most luxuriant style; in The Garden, in which he traces the history of horticulture from the garden of Eden to the Persian gardens in the reign of Cyrus, he is especially fascinated by the quincunx. A smaller work of great beauty and subtlety, entitled A Letter to a Friend, Upon occasion of the Death of his Intimate Friend, was published posthumously in 1690.

Browne had always been a Royalist, and his fame both as doctor and as writer gained him a knighthood when Charles II visited Norwich in 1671. He seldom left the city but corresponded with such men of learning as John Evelyn, Sir William Dugdale, and John Aubrey. Most of his surviving letters, however, were written to his eldest son, Edward Browne, and these give an intimate picture of his medical practice and his relations with his family. Browne has been criticized for the part he played in 1664 as a witness in the condemnation of two women as witches.

The first edition of Browne’s collected works was published in 1686; the standard edition (including letters) is Works, edited by Geoffrey Keynes, 4 vol., new ed. (1964). Keynes also compiled A Bibliography of Sir Thomas Browne Kt. M.D., 2nd ed. rev. and augmented (1968).